Freaky Friday 4

I grew up in the city. We don’t do guns in the ‘burbs. Guns are for the police. Guns kill people.

Jim grew up in the country. He had his own REAL gun at age 8. As a child, he was allowed to take his REAL gun and his REAL bullets out BY HIMSELF for hours at a time. So did all of his friends. Guns in the country are no big deal. They sit on the coffee table when you walk into a house. They kill the pesky groundhogs that ruin crops. They put down the poor housecat that got hit by a car. They are a source of general conversation and weekend activities.

As a token of my appreciating all that is Jim, it’s a [well known] fact that I gave him a gun as a wedding present. Something I never in a million years would have considered. And not just any gun, a really nice, really powerful, really expensive gun. He says it’s the one material thing he’d take with him if our house was burning down.

I've come to respect guns. Not like them, mind you, but appreciate them as a tool for recreation or protection. We have two handguns and about 3 rifles in the house right now.

Parents magazine had a big article on children’s safety and one of the topics was guns in the house. They suggest that before you let your child play at anyone’s house you should ask the parent if there are guns in the house. They do not advise whether the answer to this question should dictate your letting your child stay (I assume they let everyone make their own decision about this) but do suggest that if the answer is “yes, we do have guns in the house” there should be follow-up questions regarding the safety precautions being taken with them in relation to children.

I can buy into this concept. Though I'm sure this question never escaped either of my parents lips to any of the several dozen houses I played at, your child’s safety should always be a concern.

The odd thing is that if someone actually asked me this I’d be a little taken aback; I think it’s my roots of “guns are bad” that would put me on the defensive. Especially if, when I was honest with my “yes, we do have guns in the house” they elected not to let their children stay. I’d certainly explain that the guns are locked in a case and individually have their own trigger locks on them. I’d also confirm that bullets are not stored with the guns and that all firearm elements are kept out of the way and not in any areas children would be.

At the end of the day, I don’t see myself asking any parents about guns. It’s probably because of my own desire to not have someone ask me and judge me negatively. Especially as I don’t see us getting rid of them any time soon (ever).

Little Life Updates

1. This is my 550th blog!

2. The whole family likes apricots. I ate one with breakfast, Nicole ate one for part of her dinner, and Jim tried some of Nicole’s. My boss saw mine on my desk and asked, “oh I see you brought in a peach for my hamster. What the hell is that thing?”

3. Nicole’s yeast infection is not totally cleared up after a week so we’re headed back to the doctor this afternoon. I feel like I live at that place.

4. Nicole is wearing her first ever pair of shorts today. They’re pink plaid.

5. Jim’s softball team is 7-0 this season!

6. Our mattress is really uncomfortable and Jim and I wake up sore each morning. We were going to trade it in for a firmer one but the guy suggested going softer before going harder and gave us a foam pad to add. Last night, for the first time in 6 months, I found a sweet spot in bed.

8 X 6

Thanks to Katrin, you get to learn some random facts about me! Lucky you!

Eight things I am passionate about:
1. Reading
2. Jim
3. Nicole
4. Manners
5. Retiring
6. Weekends
7. Planning Anything (vacations, interior decorating, parties…)
8. Traveling

Eight things I want to do before I die:
1. Go to Egypt
2. Go to the Panama Canal
3. Not outlive all of my friends (selfish, but I don’t want to be lonely!)
4. Publish something creative
5. Take art lessons
6. See rotten government cease to exist worldwide (the turned away US disaster relief ships have me all irratated)
7. Live in a safer and smarter America
8. Plan a[nother] wedding

Eight things I say often
1. Please
2. Thank You
3. I love you
4. You’re so cute (to Nicole)
5. Obviously
6. Let me know if you have any questions (mostly in email)
7. Absolutely Right
8. Can I have a kiss (to Nicole)

Eight books I've read recently:
1. currently reading: Face the Fire (Nora Roberts)
2. Heaven and Earth (Nora Roberts)
3. Dance upon the Air (first in the trilogy I just mentioned by Nora Roberts)
4. Dr. Seuss’s Feet Book
5. The Little Engine that Could
6. Love Slave
7. A 6-book series by Nora Roberts (yeah, she’s my favorite author)
8. Jeffery Gittomer’s Little Red Book of Selling

Eight movies I've seen eight times:
I doubt I’ve seen them 8 times, but I have seen them several times

1. Dirty Dancing
2. National Treasure
3. Coyote Ugly
4. Ocean’s 11
5. The Fast & The Furious
6. Traffic
7. Baby Einstein’s My First Signs
8. What a Girl Wants

Eight People who should do this
1. Laura
2. Lisa
3. Dale
4. Sarah W
5. Viki
6. Sarah F
7. Dave S
8. You!
(I'd put TREY, but I still can't read his blog!)

Tuesday Evening

Last night we test drove the Saturn Outlook just to get a well-rounded view of our SUV options. Things it has going for it:

1) 75% of the price of the Enclave

2) You have a standard base and ala carte add your options. Strangely since we’re picking the top base car there are only 2 options Jim wants – Enhanced Convenience (memory drivers seat, auto-folding mirrors (which we need for our tight-fit garage), heated leather seats, etc.) and second row captains chairs (in lieu of a bench). He doesn’t even want the double moon roof!

3) 24MPG Highway

4) The dealership offered free loaner cars every time they have our car, regardless of cost or time

We still want to hit up the Honda dealership to check out the new ’09 Pilots that were released on 5/22/08. Once we see that we’ll be prepared to make one last check of the Enclave and have a decision made.

It’s a simultaneous let down and relief that our Supplier Discount (through P&G) negates any negotiating.


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After we test drove the car and Nicole fell asleep in the car seat, we went to do our weekly shopping at Meijer. Jim bought another gift card and I told him I didn’t even want to see it.

Is it strange that we bought 6 apricots for the sole reason that they’re cute? Neither of us has ever had one and we have no idea if we’ll like them or not. It’s probably bad, but we both agreed that if we didn’t like them then we’d have Nicole eat them since she likes everything!

Can't afford gas?

A scary, but insightful, article on what would happen if gas went to $10.

A more smile-inducing article on air-powered cars (yes, you read that right) .

Weekend of 5/23/08

This weekend – only OK.

Some highlights and lowlights:
1) Jim and I managed to take Nicole to Tumbleweed for dinner on Friday. There we noticed she jerks her head a lot. Of course once we saw it more than twice I became paranoid that she has some weird disease. Jim had me looking up palsy on the internet when we got home and I was nutso about it all weekend.

2) Saturday we headed to Spencerville for Rich’s wedding which was very nice. What was not nice was the fact that they had to clean up the hall after the reception and by “clean up” I mean that it was suggested they do the windows in the bathroom. What the !? I'm SO GLAD that we PAID someone to do that crap for us at our reception hall. Who wants to come off the high of their own wedding reception only to have to mop floors!?

3) While in Spencerville Jim and I realized we were missing out Meijer gift card that we had recently been crediting groceries to. We spent $300 to get $30 back and I lost the card with $170 remaining on it. After nearly an hour searching at home (through pockets, dryer, cars, trash…) no dice. I got so upset about it I made myself nauseous. Fortunately Jim didn’t rub it in but GEEZ how careless can I be!? I'm telling myself that someone who needed it more than we did found it in the parking lot or something like that.

4) We got the exterior lights on the house – you know, the ones that illuminate the house at night and make us look rich (hehehe)? They look great and we’re expecting several neighbors to follow our lead.

5) Jim worked on the garage ceiling (mudding it) all morning on our day off (Monday) and the nap we took made us too late to car and furniture shop so we couldn't test drive the Saturn Outlook and we didn’t find a car seat that I was convinced was perfect. We did find a bathing suit top (not bottom yet as I didn’t like what matched) for me though AND it was ½ price for Memorial Day!

6) Dinner at Mom and Dad’s was nice. I don’t get to see my niece nearly enough!

Freaky Friday 3

I think ghosts are one of those things that a lot of people claim to have encountered but wouldn’t be totally convinced if they had to sit and defend it logically.

Some times in our old house strange things would happen- like I’d see something out of the corner of my eye that wasn’t there when I looked right at the same spot. Or the curtains would rustle with no reason. I used to tease Jim that the female poltergeist in the house wasn’t happy that I was there and wanted him all to herself.

In my new house there was a white mist that was so apparent I actually said “excuse me” out loud when I walked past it at 3 in the morning. Looking back, my rational self says that I was still half sleeping and didn’t really see anything.

My old boss was VERY convinced of spirits. Honestly, any of us who worked late understood why – on several occasions many of us heard walking and talking to the point that we’d walk around looking for someone and calling out “hello?” Chris went so far as to call in a “seer” to talk to the ghosts in our office and to purge them to the ‘white light’ if they wanted to go. While the experience was hokey, I will attest that there were fewer instances of noises from then on.

My mind has a hard time wrapping around the concept of ghosts. To believe in ghosts you have to believe that souls have many possible paths upon death – to stay on Earth and not ascent being one of them (I'm ignoring the option that there isn’t a Heaven and that all souls stay on Earth or simply cease to exist). Why would anyone choose to not go to Heaven and stay here where they realistically can’t accomplish much/anything? That doesn’t make sense to me but a lot of living people don’t make sense to me either.

Some interesting/entertaining ghost movies should you now be in the mood:
Ghost (loving husband stays to catch his killer and protect his wife)
White Noise (exploration that ghosts can communicate through static)
City of Angels (angel pines after an Earthly Woman)
The Grudge (haunted house attacks people)

Tidbits

Nicole has a yeast infection (like jock itch) and I’ve let her sleep naked the past two nights which really helps. Last night she pooped the bed and I had to clean it and her up. What’s blog-worth about this, and strange to realize, is that cleaning a kid smeared in poop was so uneventful I just shrugged my shoulders, cleaned it up and wasn’t even going to mention it here as a big deal.

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Does anyone actually ever protest a wedding anymore? Did any one ever do it to begin with?

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I have a very little permanent stains on my shirt in a somewhat prominent place. The problem is that I really like this shirt and it matches a lot of outfits. This morning I said screw it and wore it anyway. If anyone asks I plan on claiming to have spilled coffee this morning.

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I still need a bathing suit to wear on this cruise with my co-workers. I’ve poked around a few places to no avail and looked at Victoria’s Secret’s online sale (surprisingly good prices) for some options. Nothing at VS online seems appropriate (shocker, I know) and I'm still too nervous to buy a swimsuit without trying it on. Even though it’s still high 60’s, and not swim weather, bathing suits are already on clearance and I'm afraid that I'm too late to find anything good. : (

She Bangs! She Bangs!

Banging on anything is one of Nicole's great callings in life. Here are some of her favorite targets:

Numbers

I have a lot of numbers memorized.

• Birthdays of over two dozen people
• Security codes (2) for my office
• How much everyone in my immediate family weighs
• Speeddials
• My social and Jim’s
• Anniversary dates
• The exact amounts Nicole slept and ate in any given day
• The time I was born
• Phone numbers
• Addresses (I can rattle off full contact information for lots of clients as well as personal numbers for family)
• General prices for common items (to compare if something is a good deal)
• Passwords for the ATM, Shutterfly, office database, voice mail, etc.

And the list goes on and on.

Sometimes it startles me how many different numbers are in my head. Realistically though, I can conceptualize that my brain could store SO much more if I trained it and that I'm probably using a very small portion of its capacity. Overall, I see this as a sign that my life is very crowded with information.

Work Free!

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve felt very stressed out lately, mostly about work. Jim’s been experiencing the same thing which leads us to moan to each other in the evenings and dream of how great it would be to be retired.

Jim’s gone so far as to roughly calculate what we need to save in order to retire- $2.5 million. With $2.5M we could invest it in bonds (pretty safe 5% return on average) and live off the ~$100,000/year interest. He’s predicted that with careful planning we could realistically have this in 22 years.

22 years sounds like a short time to collect that much money and it is when that figure is based on maintaining current living standards (mortgage, 529 and 401K contributions, vacations, etc.). I’d be 50 in 22 years – about 15 years younger than most people anticipate retiring. Also, at the rate we’re paying off our mortgage, we’ll outright own our home in 21 years which means that we’d have no house payment during retirement and could enjoy spending the money we pay for our house on living (Egypt better be safe in 22 years because I plan on going!).

I’ll tell you though, 22 years seems like an eternity if this stress-level was maintained.

The downsides of retiring early? To retire at 22 we BOTH have to maintain our current earning rate. That means I have to continue to work full time- something that I was hoping not to do once we had kids. Also, at 28 being retired sounds like it could get kinda boring. Provided we have another kid in ’09 we’ll still have kid(s) in college 22 years from now that we intend on financially supporting (here’s hoping that today’s 529 contributions take care of most/all of that…). Given national statistics on saving, we probably won’t have many people our age retiring in their early 50’s to hang out with. Good thing we like each other!

Jim gave me another option for his retiring early – I move to P&G Marketing, become a [marketing] rockstar, advance to director, and make enough for him to drop down to a reduced workweek. Good plan for him!

Blogging

What’s a “good blog”? One might say that it’s a piece that gets a lot of comments but I think that isn’t fair as some people don’t 1) have a lot of readers or 2) have a lot of commenting readers. For example, I know Carol reads my blog but she only comments like 1/month. That doesn’t mean that she didn’t like what I had to say though (I assume…).

Me personally? I like to read special interest stories (like the opera singing conductor), opinions on things people see every day (green rivers, screwed up American phrases), obviously good news (babies, houses, new jobs, etc.), or subjects that I’m not interested enough on my own to research but I’m glad other, smarter people do and summarize for me (ie education rates in America by state, or tax dollar distribution). I started reading Laura’s blog see what another mom is doing to get some reassurance that I wasn’t screwing up my kid (Ella is only 2 weeks older than Nic), but I keep reading because I get excited about how Ella is growing and how a stay-at-home mom keeps herself busy (which I find amazing).

Sometimes I try to go out on a limb a bit with my blogs (ie aliens) because where else can I comment on such things; they don’t come up in normal conversation but they still rattle around in my head sometimes. My weekend updates are for my own reference later on more than anything else. Some times I want to simply show off my kid because she’s darn cute.

I never write for comments though I do appreciate those who have good imput (especially Katherine or Tom as they seem to often write intelligent, researched responses) and make me think beyond my initial opinion. Obviously I like it when something I write generates a lot of response (like whether or not to mow your own yard) mostly because it seems like I found a topic that is somewhat universal, agreed upon or not.

I should reach out and read more random blogs, ala Katrin, but never seem to remember to if I get a down minute…

Freaky Friday 2

Drugs fascinate me. I think it’s because I’ve never really done them that it interests me why people do. Especially hard drugs. Because I don’t have any intention of doing any (especially now that I'm a responsible parent!), I'm very intrigued as to what those who do experience- basically, what does getting that kind of high feel like?

In fact, in our Table Topics box (thanks again D & R) Jim and I came across the question “If you could do something once and have no consequences what would you do?” – my answer was cocaine. Something I’d never ever even consider doing in real life and therefore am curious as hell to understand why some people do.

The once popular Absinthe, an alcohol made with wormwood that has been banned in the US (until yesterday) due to its hallucinogenic effects, is making a comeback. The type the US now has access to is only 3% potency compared to our European friends’ version (Katrin, care to comment?). I'll be interested to see if this "new" liquor becomes popular. At $100/bottle that's ify.

In my spare time, if I choose to spend it watching TV, I find myself getting sucked into that Intervention show where addicts are interviewed and at the end of the show their friends and family try to convince them to go to rehab. It’s amazing to me that these people see think their lives are fine even after hearing over and over again that their family is hurt by their actions, the fact that they can’t hold a job, or that a large portion of the population is not doing what they’re doing.

Yeah, this would be a tough blog to publicly comment on probably….

Nicole is 10 months!

Nicole turned 10 months old on Sunday, May 11.

Proportions: She weighs 20 lbs and is finally tall enough to be marked on the wall height chart in her bedroom (29 inches if I remember correctly)

Eating & Drinking: She can drink from a sippy cup (½ juice, ½ water typically). More and more we’re letting her eat what we’re eating for dinner. For example, on Mother’s Day she had chicken, green beans, corn bread, and a few tastes of the creamy part of a deviled egg. She really enjoys feeding herself and having an attentive and encouraging audience while she does it!

Activities: Nic will pull herself up on any and everything – toys, furniture, walls, pant legs, nothing at all (see pictures), etc.- and is a very good cruiser (walking holding on to something) now. A new fun activity is climbing- over legs, up stairs, onto window ledges- and, unfortunately, she has no fear about diving head first off of tall surfaces like beds and couches. I'm forever grabbing her ankles and letting her down to a flip on the floor.

Cute Tricks: Playing “Indian” (bopping her mouth with her hand), waving bye-bye, giving kisses with a noise, imitating noises (especially blowing “raspberries”)

Back in the saddle

I was a good blogger. Now I'm an average blogger but a very bad blog reader. I just caught up on 4 entries of Sarah's, 2 of Tom's, 3 of Katrin's and at least one from everyone else. Geesh.

I also did some rearranging - I "upgraded" some blogs (Tom & Carol) back to the "regular" section since they're posting more (and Carol's car blogs are particularly funny) and I changed the title for the bad bloggers who haven't posted in months (who I might erase soon).

As this form of journaling relaxes me I'm going to work to do it more often again.

Oh - and Nicole gave me a card and Jim gave me some mint chocolate chip ice cream last evening. :) She said she wouldn't trade me for all the Cheerios in the world.... and I believe her!

Akron Pics

The woman of the hour: Sarah! Doesn't she look all smart and graduated?!

OH NO! The Quaker Oats gears caught Viki!!

1320 Honeys!

Weekend of 5/9/08

I took off a half day on Friday (2 in one week!) to head up to Akron with Lisa for Sarah’s graduation. The three hour trek there was a breeze (in my opinion) due to good conversation and only 1 pit stop along the way. Seeing Sarah again (and her family) was wonderful. She’s so skinny you have to squint to see her! We ate pizza, toured Akron a bit, harassed the hotel front desk man, witnessed a possum “commit suicide” and slept in a round room.

Graduation day was clear and bright. Too chilly for the cute outfit I brought but I had a back-up sweater and slacks. Sarah was the second person to receive her Masters and walk across the stage to get her diploma with head held high. We were all quite proud! The rest of the afternoon was low-key with lunch, Target shopping, and ultimately Sarah’s graduation party. Putting some faces with names I’ve been hearing about for 2 years was good, even better that I genuinely liked the faces and personalities and (I know I'm a geek) felt reassured that Sarah was in good hands 4 hours away.

The trip home was uneventful – Vanilla Bean from Starbucks (crazy vanilla), Mickey D’s for lunch, and a welcome home (to Troy) hug from Kendall. I made it home by about 3:30, just in time to get everything together and head to my mom’s for mother’s day.

Honestly, my first official mother’s day was disappointing. Everyone in my generation except us was in jeans while the “adults” were dressed up business casual or greater. It really signaled to me the turning of a page when it comes to holiday celebrations. My brother wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t get to see him, Linds, or Ryann very much at all. I know it’s just paper, but I wish that I had gotten more than just the one card I did from my grandmother. My own daughter didn’t even get me a card and I had to wish myself happy mother’s day at 10:30pm to remind Jim to say it at all. Not looking for sympathy or “make-up” affirmation, just journaling in general.

The work week starts afresh! I have high aspirations of accomplishing a lot!

Auto Tatoos

On the way into work today I followed what looked to be a 15-year old Geo Metro covered in political bumper stickers. The problem with this is that I think he’s doing his candidate an injustice. When I look at that, though intrigued with the clever sayings, I critically think “if this guy is driving that car I do not want to do what he’s doing” including voting for that candidate. If this same guy was driving a Lexus I’d first think “why the hell isn’t this guy smart enough to not deface his car?” then I’d actually give his sticker’s message some critical thought and value.

This is why I wouldn’t put any UD paraphernalia on my Sentra. I didn’t want people to look see that piddily car and say “I'm not going to that school if this is all their alumni can afford to drive!”. I do however have a pretty license plate frame that proudly states my affiliation with the university on the Avalon.


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Side note – I heard Champagne Supernova on 94.1 today and it made me smile.

Weekend of 5/3/08

As you saw from my last post, I REALLY needed some destress time. Thank God for this weekend.

Friday night Jim and I took Nicole up the street to our neighbors', Rob and Shirley, house for dinner. It was us and another couple from the neighborhood and we got to know one another better - what we do for a living, current events, and of course a large dose of conversation about our houses. We really like them and hope that now with the warmer weather we can get out and see them more.

Saturday I got up at 7 to tend to Nicole and we headed downtown for the Flying Pig Marathon. Jim did the "Pump and Run" 5K where you get 30 seconds off your run time for each time you can bench press your weight. Since my husband is hot and buff he pumped 15 times and got 7:30 off his ~25/minute time.

G-Scott ran the race too and said he'd do it again with more training (he only practiced 5X).

Here they are before the 5K race:



Here they are after running for almost a half hour in 60 degrees of pouring down rain (that's rain, not sweat on Greg's shirt):

Nicole and I stood at the water station for a long time cheering on the runners. Many smiled and waved to Nicole as they ran by. We stood so long, however, we missed the guys actually finishing the race! They had to be encouraged by our cool sign ("Way to 'fly' Daddy & Uncle Greg") after the race. Boooo!

Once home and showered up we enjoyed the warm and dry!

I did a lot of taping for painting (laundry room and living room) and we snuck in Juno (A) too. I can't recommend this movie enough - made me laugh, made me cry, made me want to go snuggle with Nicole.

Side note - our next door neighbor's moved in this weekend. Didn't talk to them though...

Treading Water

I'm REALLY stressed out lately. Work is getting overwhelming – so much stuff going on, newly raised quotas and job responsiblities, an unending stream of projects not going smoothly, etc. I'm so busy I haven’t even had time to read blogs, much less write them. Yesterday in the drive through lane for lunch I was actually so stressed I almost opened the car door and got sick. I keep flipping back between being motivated and excited about the new changes at work to being overwhelmed and not wanting to get out of bed and go at all. *exhale* Life will be better when school doesn’t suck up my free time and our home life settles down and is less busy. I think I just need more detox time- taking off next Wednesday and a half day on Friday should help.

Song that makes me feel better: http://www.musicremedy.com/audio/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowAudioPlayer&AudioId=11980&Quality=5

Nicole just got a BUNCH of new clothes from a guy on Jim’s softball team. By “a bunch” I mean 8 pairs of jeans, about 3 dozen shirts, 2 bathing suits, half a dozen skirts…. Most of it is Baby Gap and Old Navy. I used to think that I would only buy my kid new stuff but I’ll tell you what, getting new-to-me clothes from friends and mother’s sales is just as exciting and a hell of a lot cheaper and I don’t feel as bad if she doesn’t get a lot of use out of it

OK, nice mental break; back to the grind.